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The value of attitude and understanding.

You were, I believe, incorrect when you wrote:

"The resulting [after linkage of a cholera epidemic to a contaminated well] changes for public health policy in London changed the course of the history of cities. What will we take for granted about our impact on public knowledge in a hundred years?"

There were other people thinking about the cholera epidemic. They believed in the same bad air theory that gave us the name for malaria. They wanted to eliminate the bad air.

So what they did was to stop the raw sewage leak that made the air smell so foul. That was the leak that was contaminating the well.

People who were acting on an incorrect understanding had an even more benign influence on the future than did Snow, whose views remained a minority for years after.

Is this an example of how science replaces pseudo-science?

No. It's an example of how attitude is more effective than understanding.

Let's say that instead of one well, the epidemic was being produced by many wells. Snow could solve a one-well epidemic by removing a pump handle. To change a whole city system he needed cooperation.

And fairly or unfairly, people can more easily be urged to help by someone who is not obsessed with overthrowing their settled opinions. The bad air theory did more good than the more accurate theory.

We can see the way acceptance depends upon attitude clearly in the response to Darwin's view of evolution, as modified subsequently.

There is nothing intrinsically opposed to religion in evolution. Except for some views about how truth may be found.

However, when advocates of evolution confidently and smugly announce that evolution destroys any possible credence in religion, belief in evolution becomes a minority view in a religious country like the US and is declining.

Then the evolution advocates create a further disaster by demonstrating contempt for people who do not share their views.
And I suspect that more good in the world has been done by people who believe in scientifically erroneous history than those whose knowledge is more correct.

Agree or disagree about that excursion, but note that the discovery of a truth need not lead to benign consequences. Nor anything about the impact on public knowledge of discoveries in the future. It's not that simple.

Posted by: Anton Philidor   Posted on: 12/05/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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